Using Web Browsers


  1. The title of the URL is Blackboard Learn-Mozilla Firefox.
    The homepage url is https://mymasonportal.gmu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp


    2. This appeared because it is the default page for this particular web browser. You can change this default setting by going to "tools" in your upper toolbar, then clicking "options." Then, adjust the home page status to the website you desire.
  2. Depending on the web page, you can change how a website looks in your browser to have better readability. In a Safari browser (my dominant browser for things that need to be legible) I go to the "reader" portion of the url line and it makes the font bigger. Otherwise, you will only be able to adjust the text based on what the design of the website allows.
  3. Default search engine associated with my browser is Google. You get to it by going to the upper right corner of the browser screen and filling in your search term there.

Searching the Web

  1. 314,000,000 results. I predict that less than half of the results (if that many) are specifically fulfilling the requirements stated by the search terms.
  2. 35,600 results.
    Link 1
    Link 2.
    A greater amount, maybe 75% of the options, may deal directly with the topic discussed.
  3. The results were not consistent across search engines. I think the differences may come from how many times something was searched in a search engine and how popular that link is. Also sponsored links will be different for each website, resulting in a different number and type of website for a search term. You would use a different search engine from your default in order to find these different kinds of websites.
  4. Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine in the way we understand search engines. I would call it a web encyclopedia. It gives specific information about the source your looking at, trying to connect directly with the content rather than find content that would better answer whatever question you have.

Using Metasearch Sites

  1. Search engines and Metasearch sites differ in the way that metasearch sites combine all results from multiple search engines to find what you’re looking for, where as a search engine just uses what’s within its own database.
  2. The metasite does not tell you how many results it has, but considering it draws from multiple search engines, the list is probably massive.
  3. Link 1
    Link 2
    Considering how neither of these two results are exactly what i typed into the search bar, I think it is safe to say that probably very few of these results deal directly with my line of inquiry.

  4. There are sixteen pages worth of results, although I was unable to locate the exact number of hits. They are organized to have ads that are related to the search term at the top, web pages referring to your search term in the middle, and regular ads at the bottom.
  5. The results seem a little more user compatible in the sense that there are questions being asked on the web pages provided similar to the one you put in the search bar

Multimedia

  1. Using Google, the easiest way to search for multi-media is to click the ‘video’ option when you finish searching at the top part of the page near the search bar. You can also search for images, moving images (by typing ‘gif’ next to your search terms), and apps.
  2. For search term “Supernatural Bloopers,” I got 4,140,000 results.
  3. I’m not sure what the final question means, but I think there’s always a concern for giving credit where credit is due. Always lead your readers back to your source, otherwise you could be infringing on someone’s intellectual or cyber property. There’s also risk of some videos/images/links being prone to viruses which everyone should be careful when working in those venues.

    4. Web Hosting Sites

    Just doing a simple search of “2014’s top web hosts” got me a couple of lists that generally agree that “justhost” is a good hosting website that is cheap and user-friendly. If I was genuinely looking for a web host for a web site of my own, I would want to make sure it was compatible with whichever transfer platform I was using, that it fit my budget and was appropriate for whatever I wanted to use the page for.

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